


Into Shadows, Part 5

by skyblue_reverie



Series: Into Shadows [5]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 08:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20579594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyblue_reverie/pseuds/skyblue_reverie
Summary: My take on Into Darkness, less dark and with 11 billionty times more Pike and McCoy.This part: Carol Marcus and cryotubes.  And a short make-out session.Leonard’s face immediately softened into a fond almost-smile that he would have vehemently denied. He prided himself on his prickly demeanor. Chris thought it was frankly adorable.





	Into Shadows, Part 5

“Captain Pike, may I have a private word with you?” Jim’s tone was professional but Pike could see the tenseness in his posture, hear the worry he was trying to keep out of his voice.

He nodded. “In my ready room. Mr. Sulu, you have the conn.”

When they were seated across from each other at the small conference table, Jim spoke. “There’s something strange going on here. Something more than we’ve been told. I spoke with the prisoner – “ Jim held up a hand to stop Pike from interrupting. “Yes, I know he might just be playing mind games. But I think it’s more than that.”

Pike considered. The best commanding officers had good gut instincts. They had to. If Jim’s gut was telling him something was up, it was better to hear him out. He motioned Jim to continue.

“He gave me a set of coordinates near earth, told me that if I looked there I’d see why he did what he did. I know we’re stuck and can’t get there, but the Bradbury, Spock’s new ship, isn’t set to depart for another week. Spock should still be earthside, on leave, and he could check it out. I’d like your permission to ask him to do that. Unofficially. He wouldn’t be breaking any regs, just taking a personal shuttle to what’s supposed to be empty space near one of Jupiter’s moons.”

“What else did he say?” Pike said. He wasn’t going to commit until he’d heard Jim out fully.

“He told us to open one of the torpedoes. Said that would somehow convince us to listen to him, take him seriously. Scotty’s been suspicious of those things from the beginning. I don’t think it could hurt to have Scotty open one up and see what we’re dealing with.”

Pike tapped his fingers on the table. “Admiral Marcus told me that Carol had been working with Harrison on a weapons project. It might’ve been this one. We should get her input, see what she knows before we go tinkering with unknown tech.”

“I didn’t know that Lieutenant Marcus had been working with him.”

“With Harrison?” Chris asked.

Jim hesitated. “Well, sir, that’s another oddity. I did some digging, and the thing is, until a year ago, there’s no record of a John Harrison serving in Starfleet. And there’s no record of him at all before that. It’s like he just popped into existence a year ago, when he started working at Section 31.”

Now Chris’s instincts were pinging as well. It sounded like Alexander Marcus – a man he’d thought was his friend – had been holding out on him. “Anything else?” he said tersely.

“Well, just one more thing,” Jim said. “He knew we’d had a warp core malfunction. He called it ‘convenient.’ Made it sound like sabotage, and that he knew who was behind it and why.”

“Damn it,” Pike said. He was liking this less and less.

“Yeah,” agreed Jim. “Plus there’s the fact that he took out that entire squad of Klingons – saving our asses, as you know – and then tossed his weapons aside and surrendered to us, when obviously he could have left us to die or killed us himself. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Pike thought for a moment. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to go talk to Carol, find out what she knows. You’re going to use the secure connection here in my ready room to contact Spock and ask him to check out those coordinates. Use his private comm ID, not his Starfleet one. We need to keep this out of official channels until we know what’s going on. If he balks, tell him that it’s a personal request from me. If he _still_ balks, remind him that Lt. Uhura’s safety may be at stake. After you talk to Spock, go check in with Mr. Scott, see if it’s plausible that the warp core malfunction was a result of sabotage, and ask him how difficult it would be to open up one of those torpedoes. We’ll meet back here after that and decide what to do about the prisoner and those damn torpedoes.”

Jim nodded, rising to his feet to use Chris’s vidcomm unit. Chris left him to it and headed for medbay.

When Pike reached medical, it was empty except for Carol, who seemed to be peacefully sleeping on a biobed, and Len, who was running some sort of test at a counter, fiddling with a microscope next to what appeared to be a dead tribble. He looked up as Chris entered. Leonard’s face immediately softened into a fond almost-smile that he would have vehemently denied. He prided himself on his prickly demeanor. Chris thought it was frankly adorable.

Chris saw Len’s eyes flicking around medbay and, realizing they were alone for the moment, he addressed Chris informally. “Hey, darlin’,” he said. “Everything all right?”

Chris shook his head. “I’m not sure. It seems like there’s more going on here than Admiral Marcus chose to share with me.”

Leonard's jaw tightened. “Yeah, I was there when Jim spoke to Harrison.”

“If that’s even his name. Jim said he didn’t officially exist until a year ago,” Chris said, and Len’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Harrison – or whoever he is – has been working with Carol on a top-secret weapons project. Maybe even those torpedoes we’re carrying. I need to talk to her, find out what she knows.”

Len was obviously reluctant. “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important,” Chris said softly. After a moment, Len nodded.

“Fine. She’s not seriously injured, just shaken up. I gave her a mild sedative but I’ll give her something to counteract it so you can talk to her. But take it easy on her, all right?”

“She’s my goddaughter, Len. I wasn’t going to interrogate her.”

“I know, darlin’. Just – you have a way about you, you know. Sometimes it’s hard to see the man behind the Starfleet officer.”

Chris was pretty sure that they were no longer talking about Carol, but he just nodded. There wasn’t time for a longer discussion now, but he knew that this – his being Len’s direct commanding officer – was going to change things between them. He just hoped they could weather it. He’d never had anyone like Leonard McCoy in his life before and he sure as hell didn’t want to lose him.

He dismissed these thoughts for the time being, walking over to Carol’s bedside, waiting as Len gently pressed a hypospray to her neck. In just a few seconds, she was stirring, opening her eyes, looking confused and a little distressed until she saw Chris’s face. Then she smiled. “Uncle Chris,” she said. He heard Leonard’s suppressed snort of amused surprise but ignored it.

“Hi there, Carrie-bear. You doing okay?”

She smiled more widely and rolled her eyes, like he’d hoped. “Uncle Chris, _please_ don’t call me that. I am a grown woman, you know.”

“You’ll always be that six-year-old with a homemade catapult and grass-stained knees to me.”

Her affectionate smile held for a moment longer before it faded. “Thanks for the rescue,” she said quietly. 

“Of course,” he said. “But I need you to tell me what’s going on. I have a feeling I’ve just put the Enterprise in the middle of a shitstorm of epic proportions.”

Her eyes sharpened, and she appeared to suddenly realize that he was wearing a captain’s uniform rather than an admiral’s. “You’re captaining the Enterprise? What happened?”

“I’ll tell you the story later, but for right now, I need to know who John Harrison is, what’s in those torpedoes I’ve got in my missile bay, and how your father and the Klingons fit in.”

She nodded. “I’ll tell you what I know, but it’s not a lot. Can I sit up, please?” Leonard adjusted the biobed settings until she was in a mostly upright position, then at Chris’s significant look, he headed back over to his experiments, far enough away to at least give them the illusion of privacy.

“My father got me placed at Section 31, as you probably know. About a year ago, I was assigned to work with a new transfer to the division, an agent named John Harrison. We were working together on newer, more powerful phaser technology. He was brilliant. But it was obvious from the beginning that he was… different. He didn’t know things that he should have known – cultural references, history, things that anyone raised within the Federation would know. He was good at faking it, but I could tell.

“We became friends. He seemed so out-of-place, and I felt sorry for him. I don’t know, now, whether he genuinely cared for me, or if I was just a means to an end, a pawn to use against my father. Anyway, he came to me several days ago, and said that he had developed a new kind of torpedo for my father, that there were 72 prototype missiles, but that they’d been removed from Section 31, and all record of them had been deleted. He said that he was concerned about what my father might be up to. I went to my dad to ask him about them, and he wouldn’t even see me. A few days later, the bombing happened, and when the newsnets said John was responsible, I was in shock. I didn’t know what to believe. When he came to see me at my apartment, I thought there must have been some mistake, that he was innocent. But then he pulled a phaser on me, and recorded a message to my dad, saying he was taking me hostage, and then he transported us to Qo’noS, and, well, you know the rest from there.” 

Chris listened as Carol spoke, and grew graver with each sentence. A shitstorm indeed.

“Carol, if you feel up to it, we could use your help, and your expertise. We need to open one of those torpedoes. Do you think you can manage it?”

“Of course.” She looked vaguely insulted that he had even asked. 

Leonard walked back over with a tricorder in his hand, obviously having heard this last exchange, and he now ran it over her and checked the readings with a practiced eye. “I’m not happy about it, but you’re not injured, so as long as you feel up to it, I’ll clear you for duty,” Len said.

“Great!” she said, obviously happier now that she could actually do something to help. “Do you suppose I could get a uniform somewhere around here? My old one’s a little worse for wear and a medical gown isn’t exactly regulation.”

Chris laughed. “I’m sure we can find you something. I’ll send my yeoman by with a clean uniform for you, and I’m naming you interim chief science officer on the Enterprise, seeing as how we didn’t have a chance to fill that position before we took off on this mission. Report to me on the bridge when you’ve gotten changed.”

“Yes, sir,” she said crisply. Then she smiled at him. “Thanks, Uncle Chris.”

***

In the end, since Scotty was busy trying to coordinate repairs to the damaged warp core – which he said might have been sabotaged, but he wouldn’t commit himself – it was Len and Carol who took the torpedo down to a nearby planetoid to open it up.

After thirty of the longest seconds of Chris’s entire life, Len and Carol had managed to open the torpedo without getting blown up. Chris was aware that he was probably going to have a stress breakdown later, but right now he had to hold it together.

Jim and Chris walked to medbay together to see what the mysterious torpedo contained, since all Leonard would say was that they were “going to want to see this.”

As soon as they walked through the door to medical, Chris barked, “What have we got?” He was aware that he was being brusque, even cold, not even acknowledging Len and Carol’s close call. He couldn’t deal with that right now. Couldn’t think about it or his careful veneer of professionalism would crumble away entirely.

Len looked both hurt and angry, but Carol just smiled at him a little sadly. She was all too familiar with men who hid emotions behind military discipline. 

As Chris neared the torpedo tube, these thoughts fled as he stared in amazement at what appeared to be a human being inside a clear pod of some sort. He heard Jim’s surprised intake of breath next to him.

Carol broke the silence. “It’s quite clever, actually. The fuel container’s been removed from the torpedo and retrofitted to hide this cryo tube.”

“Is he alive?” Jim asked.

Len responded to Jim’s question. “He’s alive. But if we try to revive him without the proper sequencing, it could kill him. This technology’s beyond me.”

“How advanced, Doctor?” Chris asked, and he could see Len’s face grow even stormier at the formal address. Len didn’t answer, and Carol stepped in to fill the void. 

“It’s not advanced. That cryo tube is ancient,” she said.

McCoy spoke up, keeping his eyes on Jim, not looking at Chris. “We haven’t needed to freeze anyone since we developed warp capability, which explains the most interesting thing about our friend here. He’s three hundred years old.”

There was a moment of quiet as everyone absorbed this. Then Chris pulled himself together and spoke. “Dr. Marcus, I’d like you to report to engineering, see if there’s anything you can do to help get us moving again. Kirk, you and I are going to get some answers out of Harrison, or whoever he is. You head over to lockup, and I’ll catch up to you in a moment.”

Jim and Carol nodded and left medbay. Then it was just Len and Chris. Chris stepped forward and put his arms around Leonard. Leonard held himself stiffly for a moment, and then melted into Chris’s embrace. Chris spoke softly into his ear, trying not to let his voice crack. “I was so damn scared I’d lost you, Len. I don’t think I’ve ever been that scared before.”

Len huffed something that might’ve passed for a laugh and responded, “Well, now you know how I feel every time you go and do some fool thing to put yourself in harm’s way.”

Chris didn’t say anything more, just held Leonard tightly, reveling in the feel of Len’s strong arms embracing him just as hard. After a few seconds, Chris pulled back. 

“I’ve got to get going,” Chris said reluctantly.

That soft, fond look was back on Len’s face and Chris couldn’t resist it. He moved toward Len again, wrapped a hand around the back of Len’s head, and pulled him in for a kiss. He meant for it to be short and sweet, but they both got drawn into it and long seconds passed while they devoured each other’s mouths. Finally Chris broke it off, his breathing loud and ragged as he tried to calm his racing heart. 

Leonard smiled at him, that rare, gentle smile that made his dimples show. “Go on, darlin’,” he said. “You know where to find me.”

With a last, lingering look at Len, Chris turned and headed for security lockup. He wanted some damn answers _now_.


End file.
